​Workshop Program for Mine Rehab Conference 2018

Below is the list of workshops at our 8th Annual Best Practice Ecological Rehabilitation of Mined Lands Conference (2018).

The workshops are scheduled from 10:00 am until 12:30 pm on Friday 13th April (the day following the main conference) at the GP Building, University of Newcastle, Callaghan campus. A light lunch will be served following the workshops.

​​For more information on the workshop convenors please click on the convenors links.

To register for a workshop:

Click on the button below to go to the University of Newcastle Online Shop;Click on the event "Post Conference Workshops (Mine Rehab 2018)";Click "Proceed", "Create Booking" and select either "Student / Concession" or "Non-Students";Fill out your contact details and select the number of tickets for the workshop you wish to attend;Include any dietary requirements you may have. Click "Add to Cart"; and the Shopping cart and click Process Payment and Select your Payment Method.

​Mining is necessary for maintaining society’s current lifestyle and it will continue to grow at a global scale, even if the use of some mineral resources may decline. The generation of solid and liquid wastes and the discharge of these wastes on to land and into waterways are arguably the greatest impacts on the environment associated with mining. Geomorphology provides a very useful framework for understanding and quantifying stability and changes in erosion and sedimentation at those sites, which is the root of the release to wastes to the environment. But also for designing and building stable functional landforms in mine rehabilitation, processes can be improved through modelling and monitoring. Current cutting-edge research in this field tries to merge geomorphic landform design and modelling methods and packages, increasing their capabilities.

​The workshop will focus on the independent and complementary capabilities of landscape modelling (SIBERIA) and geomorphic design software (Natural Regrade with GeoFluv) for best practice mine rehabilitation. This will be illustrated with software demonstrations and real examples.

​An appreciative enquiry approach to a mine closure as a reservoir of possibilities

​‘Appreciative enquiry’ is a forward-looking strategy for ‘systematic discovery’ of constructive capacity or positive potential and a sound way to build collaborative capacity. This workshop will experience in brief an example of ‘participatory science’, a community change process that mobilises people’s ability to enquire, understand and anticipate by posing a ‘positive question’. Rather than focus on problems, and deficits in a situation or system, or a set of problems to be solved, this approach suggests that those with a stake in the future uses and performance of post-production land can relate to it as a “reservoir of possibility”. The full appreciative enquiry process consists of four stages – Discovery, Dream, Design and Destiny. In the workshop, the first three stages will be applied to a hypothetical case as per the table below.

Appreciative enquiry of a closure proposition

Posing a question: e.g. What would this land look like and how would it function if it was converted to a beneficial post-mining land use?

Stage of Appreciative enquiry

​Discover / data gathering “What is the best of what has been done?”

Dream“What might be achieved here?”

​Design and dialogue“What will make it happen?”

​Destiny/ demonstration/ delivery “What will result?”

​Tasks at that stage

​Ground the discussion in evidence of real situation: experiences, studies, etc of what has worked well (NOT a wish list)

On the basis of those pooling that knowledge of successes, express a shared vision of a possible and desirable future – a collective aspiration

Identify available resources, skills and expertise and ways to use them to bridge from ‘what is’ to ‘what might be’ (these will normally be locale-specific)

The connection, cooperation and co-creation of earlier stages will bear fruit as a change as an improved system

​The exercise will illustrate how doing this in a workshop setting maximises the potential to gain, manage and leverage knowledge from a variety of sources and experiences.